Artcurial Motorcars has posted $62.6 million in sales (56.1 million euros for its two-day collector car auction as part of Retromobile in Paris).

Artcurial Motorcars has posted $62.6 million in sales (56.1 million euros for its two-day collector car auction as part of Retromobile in Paris. The overall sales figure is a 21 percent improvement over the company’s 2015 sale in its hometown, a sale that made headlines last year by including the sensational barn-found Baillon Collection.

“We are incredibly proud of the results of this historic sale in France, home to the automobile, and in Paris, the world’s capital for collectors’ cars during the winter season,” Matthieu Lamoure, managing director of Artcurial Motorcars, said in a news release.

“I am delighted by the public’s growing passion and enthusiasm for these collectors’ cars, objects that require such attention and love. And it is exactly this love of beautiful machines, an eclectic mix catering for all tastes and budgets, and above all the insistence on high quality, that marks out Artcurial Motorcars”

Faced Vega prototype on the block | Artcurial Motorcars photo

Artcurial reported an overall 80 percent sell-through rate and that 78 percent of the buyers were from 16 countries outside of France.

The sale got off to a spectacular start Friday when a 1957 Ferrari 335 S Scaglietti from the Pierre Bardinon Collection sold for a world auction-record price in euros and British pounds, though it fell just short of the record when converted into U.S. dollars, which are very strong right now compared with other currencies.

Converted to U.S. currency, the car sold for $37.79 million. The world auction record for a collector car remains the $38.115 million paid in 2014 at the Bonhams Quail sale on the Monterey Peninsula for a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO.

On the second day of its Retromobile sale, Artcurial features cars from a single automaker. This year is was 48 vehicles from Citroen, 40 of them from Andre Trigano’s collection, and with six of the French cars drawing auction-record prices. Trigano drove one of his favorite cars — a 1939 Traction 11B cabriolet — onto the block.